


Amygdala

by Bittiface



Series: Matters of the Heart [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anxiety, BAMF Lance (Voltron), Depression, Doubt, Druids, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Immoral Science, Lance (Voltron)-centric, Langst, Loneliness, No ships just FRIENDship, Trust Issues, slightly self indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-08-28 23:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16732416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bittiface/pseuds/Bittiface
Summary: Set during an alternative Season 4.After months of feeling like he's just trying too hard, Lance takes a step back and tries to see who comes looking for him for a change. All he wants is to fit in, to feel like he's wanted, to feel like a true social equal. So he waits...Slowly his hearts starts to break...-The amygdala is known as the emotional processor of the brain, and this fic will be based and written mostly about emotions and how Lance will process or deal with them (thanks to a lot of slightly unfortunate events).Updates mostly on weekends. Tags added as I go.





	1. No Light No Life

Always the one seeking. Always the one initiating. Lance kept going with the inertia of his own natural inclinations to socialize; to find reciprocation. "I know they care. I know they like me at least a little." He murmured to himself as he flopped down onto the couch, closing his eyes against the harsh white sterile walls of the castle. A chill lingered in the air. "They're.. just busy."

So for once, he decided he'd wait. He'd chased and chased, aching to fill the void of loneliness and social seclusion. There was only so much he could do without coming across as annoying. "If they want me.. they'll come to me. Kinda sick of getting made fun of every time I get in their way, anyway." Lance allowed himself to be okay with that. In fact, he felt lighter without the frenzy of needing to seek out attention prodding at his mind and nerves. No chasing geese, so to speak. It was almost liberating to take the control from his hands. He smirked to himself, cracking his knuckles and laying his hands behind his head. "Yup. The hunter is now the.. uh.. not hunter." He chuckled to himself, and began to wait.

At first, the solitude was just that; solitude. The quiet hum of the ship around him lulled his senses to be softer, calmer. "This might not be so bad."

Hours passed. 

Lance grabbed himself a cup of cold milk and some strange biscuits Hunk had made, and got himself comfortable again in the common room. He chewed mindlessly while fixing a loose thread in his jacket now draped over his lap. He busied himself by doing stretches and some sort of self taught yoga on the floor. But hours being hours, eventually the loneliness settled in again. At some point he felt like even just the mice as company would be good enough, even though he couldn't communicate with them.

Night came, and he decided to try this again in the morning. 

Lance felt his eyes burn dryly behind his lids as he waited for sleep to claim him. The gnawing ache in his chest was difficult to ignore, but he tried to reason with himself. "They can't make time for you all the time. They love you. Heck, who wouldn't wanna be my friend? I'm awesome..." His voice came out a little more hollow than he would have liked. 

The next day, it felt like he was living on an abandoned ship. While he did see the others in passing, no one sought him out on their own. "Hey, Hunk." He waved cheerfully as he passed him in the kitchen, the bigger man giving Lance a cheery grin as he waved a hand. "Hey bud! Sleep well? Gotta run. Pidge and I are-" At this Hunk mentioned something something flux-capacitor nanobyte vlog something or other. Lance wasn't sure. But before his mind could properly unfold the words, Hunk was out the door.

Important castle stuff. That's ok. The interaction had been barely a morsel of the social energy he needed, but all for the greater good, right? Hunk wasn't just his friend. He was allowed other friends. Hunk and Pidge were so alike, after all. Meanwhile Lance was just...

Another day went by. A day spent training on his own or half heartedly playing the video game him and Pidge got. The memory of them excitedly gathering coins for it didn't bring him the joy it used to. It was a bitter recollection now, since she simply wasn't here right now... He sighed and shut off the game. He shook his head and fell back against his bed. "Jeez Louise, those nerds don't know what they're missing. Who cares about all the tech junk. What about dodgeball or gossip or something actually fun!" He was getting kind of angry at them. As much as he kept trying to reason out why they didn't look for his company, the feeling of abandonment was starting to curdle in his gut. "Getting bitter now, lance? Jeez, way to be petty." He grumbled to himself. 

A day later, they were called to battle. Lance felt a cheap thrill working with his team mates as they called moves and battle strategies. He felt like all was well again as they came back to the castle. With a smile that came from the heart, Lance trotted down from his lion and out of the hangar. But everyone was separated again. Allura gave him a soft smile as he checked the bridge. "Um.. where's Corran?" Lance asked with a slight waver in his voice. "Oh, I believe he's adjusting the lenses in the teleduv." She then turned back to her task, and Lance felt dismissed.

His heart slipped farther in his chest as he walked back to his room. Wasn't this sort of interaction with his team just.. superficial? If they only ever needed him to pilot Red.. or as an extra pair of hands now and then.. 

Didn't.. anyone like him as a friend anymore?

"I'm being childish." He scolded himself as he slumped against his door. "It's fine." He said again, hating how his throat closed and his eyes began to feel hot and wet. "No.. no it's okay. It's fine. They don't.." He choked on a sob he didn't wish to voice. He wouldn't fall to tears. "They don't owe me their friendship. I get it I'm.. annoying. And unhelpful.. Too forward.. Stupid.." He felt like he was less. Less. Worth less than the others. Less equal. Lacking in any values or character that anyone wished to seek out. He felt invisible, as if he simply didn't exist on their radar, or even in this universe. 

They don't miss me? Hours, days go by. Don't they think of me? And no one seeks him out. Not as an equal. Not as a friend.

"This is jus how it is in war," he rationalizes through shuddering breathing as his stomach curls and he slides to the floor. "Just get used to it. It makes sense but I just..I'm just so..." He buried his face in his hands as tears soaked his reddened cheeks.

I'm just so lonely.

He tried not cry aloud, even though it would probably make him feel better. But the ache and the hurt were tearing him open inside, the heavy weight of his feelings sinking in his gut, a weight of the dark world seeming to crash over his shoulders. Alone. Isolated. Invisible. Just a tool for a greater good. A lackluster soldier. An acquaintance. 

He hiccupped, feeling like maybe he had this under control for a moment. He looked up. The halls were empty. No one there. It's what he'd hoped for of course. No one to witness his pathetic whining. But.. maybe he had hoped someone would hear. Had hoped someone would save him. Wide eyes stared helplessly down the silent hallways. 

Hope shattered in his eyes, and the intense feeling of being hopelessly insignificant to the people he cared about broke his heart.

Lance slumped to the floor, the cold hard surface barely felt even against hot and stinging cheeks. It was odd. He couldn't feel anything even though he knew his feelings were hurt. Maybe this was for the best.


	2. Reaching through the Void and...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance continues to deal with the strange changes to his mind and heart, and meanders his way through social interactions.

Picking himself up from the floor with his own stiff strength, Lance felt that buzzing numb feeling take over his mind. The worry of others not caring enough to come find him, to want him, to need him.. they fell away. So he had no equal, so he had no other half, no confidant. It was okay. He didn't like being vulnerable to others anyway. He thought back to the times he nearly cried in front of his team. Turned his back, walked away, played it off as nothing. 'No one likes a cry baby, Lance', he would think to himself. They'd want a happy Lance, a funny Lance, or a cool ninja sharpshooter Lance. But if he wasn't any of those things.. then what was he? Who was he? Maybe nothing. Maybe no one.

Lance slowly shuffled his way down the hallway, eyes downcast and limbs heavy at his sides. Then he heard a noise.

Lance broke from his static thoughts and looked to the left hall. There in a darker, dim lit area of the hallway was Shiro. His back was to him, and he looked.. bent over himself.

Lance felt a small pang of worry dimly alert him from within the murk of his heart. 'He can't want me to check on him', he insisted to himself. Who would want Lance's help...  
But his feet moved anyway. He couldn't help it. Someone looked hurt, and there wasn't a bone in his body that could just walk away.

"Shiro.. are you okay?" Lance asked tentatively, one hand around his own ribs in self conscience comfort, the other hand reaching out. Shiro hissed slightly, shifting himself more upright and looking over his shoulder. He was holding the side of his head, and his eyes looked a bit tired. "Oh. Lance. Sorry, I'm alright." He said with a confident smile that Lance always thought was just so cool. Sometimes it still felt weird to be able to be on the same team as the famous Shirogane. 

Lance smiled uncertainly, forcing it more than anything simply for appearance. "You sure?" He paused and shifted his weight. "Uh.. headache?" He inquired, feeling a bit lame.

Shiro nodded anyway. "Yeah. Nothing to worry about. You look tired, Lance. You should hit the hay." At that, Shiro walked away, posture straighter than was necessary. Lance's face fell again, his blue eyes dulling. The heavy numbness felt heavier. It was silly to think Shiro would need his help. Honestly, it was embarrassing to have even tried. Who did Lance even think he was? 

"Yeah...Just tired." He murmured quietly into the void of the halls.

\- - -

Although Lance no longer sought a social equal, he did seek out company. Even if he had to delegate himself to being a proverbial fly on the wall. As Hunk and Pidge worked on something he couldn't understand, Lance laid on the floor with arms laid out on either side of him in a lazy interpretation of a snow angel, gazing at the pulsing lights of the contraption on the other side of the room. The quiet murmurs of his team mates served as white noise to him. It quietly quelled the gaping hole inside him, only managing to cover it up and never filling it. Silently, he envied the rapport the pair seemed to have; something he had no place in. He was a piece of lego trying to work with a finished puzzle.

The doors hissed open, and Allura strolled in with a tablet in hand. "Paladins! There you are. I was looking over the maps for tomorrow's excursion and I was just.." Allura trailed off as her eyes moved from Hunk and Pidge, down to Lance looking at her from the floor. She smiled fondly. "Comfortable, Lance?" She asked in a tease. He smirked and gave a half hearted thumbs up. The usual flutter of his heart when she looked at him felt almost like a shadow of what it once was. He wanted her to see him, but that want, that desire, it felt as dulled and muted as everything else right now.

She looked back to Hunk and Pidge, her features schooling back to mission mode. "Anyway, I was looking over the market space we shall be visiting. Our supplies are low and the lot of you keep complaining about the food here, so Hunk? I'd like you to please find anything in the marketplace to stock out kitchens properly." She smiled at the glee he displayed, handing the bouncing teen a small card with a predetermined amount of GAC on it. "Thanks a bunch, Allura! There's only so much I can make with food goo, cow's milk and that weird powder I found that I'm hoping is starch?" 

Worried for her Paladin's bellies but eager to move on, Allura swallowed a grimace and moved on. "Pidge, you came to me with a lot of adjustments you'd like to make on the ship, so I'm going to give you a tablet with the castle specs on it, and a card with a fair amount of GAC as well. Please choose one of the more... feasible projects you proposed, and get whatever parts you may need." Pidge let out an inhuman shriek and yanked both objects from Allura's grasp. "Thanks, Allura! Hunk, let's go make plans!" She dragged the staggering Samoan with her out the bay doors. 

Lance sat up, watching them go. His gaze automatically looked back up to Allura, even knowing that...

"Ah, Lance. I haven't anything for you to do on the planet's surface that would require your.. own strengths." She smiled sheepishly and clutched the tablet to her chest. Lance gave a masked smile and waved it off. "S'fine. I'll just chill here and work on the bod." Allura rolled her eyes and made her way out of the Team Punk work shop.

The doors hissed closed. The walls seemed both too wide and too close.

\- - -

The next day, the castle was quite literally void of all life. Hunk and Pidge were on their errands. Allura and Coran on a diplomatic mission with the Market's show runners to talk of alliances and possible trade deals. He didn't know where Shiro was. The mice? They were on his lap. Lance robotically stroked Platt's fur. The other three were making a mess of a cracker he'd found. 

The metaphorical weight in his chest was starting to feel like a physical one. His shoulders drooped more, and breathing seemed to be laborious. The mice paused in their feasting and looked up with concern as Lance let out a sigh he barely heard.

Lance looked down upon those small little sets of eyes, and tried to find some glimmer of fondness in his heart for the care they must feel for him. But he couldn't find it. Not even a rattling in the hollow of his chest. He knew he should feel it. Feel something. But.. nothing. There was nothing. 

\- - -

Shiro walked into the dim lighting of the common room, looking for a place to rest his eyes until the others came back. But instead of an empty and quiet place, he found Lance. At first he moved to leave him be, so he could retreat to his own quarters and fight his budding headache. But the stillness in Lance's form bothered him. 

Though perhaps just napping, Shiro moved closer, footfalls as soft as he could make them so as not to disturb the teen if he was indeed sleeping. But Lance's eyes were open as he rested on his side, staring vacantly across the room. 

"Lance?" Shiro knelt down as Lance startled, shifting to lean on his elbow and look up at Shiro. "Huh?"

Shiro's brows knit in thought. Lance didn't sleep with his eyes open, did he? Shiro had no point of reference; he'd never seen the boy sleeping before. Then why had the teen looked so vacant as he'd laid there?

"Feeling okay?" The Cuban didn't look flush or ill. At least not in the semi dim lights around them. Why were they turned down so much anyway? "Oh.. yeah. I'm fine. Just uh.. bored." Lance lied, sitting up properly and leaning back in the seat's cushion. Shiro smiled worriedly. "Bored, so you decided to stare at a wall in a semi lit room? That doesn't sound like you. Didn't want to go down to the surface with the others?"

Lance's lip twitched down. A bitter tar seeming to slowly paint itself in the walls of his mouth. "No." He murmured, clearing his throat in an attempt to get some sort of gusto back in his voice. He wasn't on the surface because no one asked him to come along. He'd not wanted to invite himself (again). It would go against his new creed of 'wait and ye shall receive'.  
"No, I just.." He was having trouble thinking up a lie. An excuse. A growing panic began to bubble in his stomach. He didn't want to be caught feeling how he was. He didn't want to be seen as petty, as childish. As weak. He could see it. He knew what they'd say if he came forward. 'This is war Lance, we don't have time to coddle you'. He wouldn't be a liability. He wouldn't. He wanted to be dependable. Strong. Fun.

"I was gunna train, yanno? But you can only go so many rounds with a gladiator before it gets a bit redundant, right?" He gave a shrug and a small shake of his head. Shiro nodded his head, but his expression was unreadable. Lance didn't like not knowing what the man was thinking. Out of everyone, him and Allura were the ones he wanted to see him in the best of lights. 

"Well, why don't we train together? I don't like all this waiting around." Shiro stood up, and smiled warmly as he offered his hand. "C'mon Lance. It'll be fun."

Lance gazed up at the hand he'd shook all those months ago, back in a dirty shack on Earth. Intimidated, awe struck was how he'd felt. The panic ebbed, the uncertainty took it's place.

Lance took his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter! Lemme know what you think~. I've got some foot notes for stuff I wanna have happen and the flow of the story. Still not sure how it will end, but I'm thinking a happy ending will be best.


	3. Isn't Something Missing?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance spends some time with Shiro and the gang. However, something feels missing.

Lance's fingers shook at his sides, watching Shiro prepare himself on the other side of the training deck. He wanted to be happy, to be cocky and excited. He was sparring his hero. But he was intimidated instead. It was time to force some false bravado.   
Steeling his nerves under a layer of dread, Lance stretched his arms up over his head. "C'mon, Old Man. I can't wait around all day for you to limber up!"

Shiro half choked before schooling his features into one of a more mature adult. "Alright, tough guy. You asked for it." Shiro smirked, and then lunged.

They'd agreed to no weapons. Shiro wouldn't power up his arm, and Lance wouldn't use his gun. Lance was heavily reliant on distance fighting, as Shiro had oh-so helpfully pointed out. 'You need to be prepared in case someone gets too close. What if no one has your back? We get separated on missions all the time.'

The explanation had made him feel slightly bitter. This felt less like two team mates wasting time together and more like a teacher giving him a lecture. With that happy thought, Lance braced himself and moved to duck under Shiro's attack. "Don't just evade, Lance!" Shiro grabbed Lance under the ribs and flipped him back out in front of him. Lance staggered, a less than dignified yelp escaping him as he found his balance. At least he hadn't fallen down.

Turning back to face Shiro, the taller man once again made a grab for him. Lance tried to use Shiro's extra bulk against him, letting the momentum of his lunge be his downfall. Lance grabbed his arm and pulled him forward, using his foot to trip him up. It almost worked. Lance grunted as the man kept his balance and twirled Lance around again.

Geez, the man was just playing with him!

Lance panted, looking back over his shoulder. Shiro looked picture perfect calm, not a hair out of place. Meanwhile Lance felt ragged. "Not tired already, are you champ?" Shiro asked with a grin. Lance scowled, feeling like his playfulness was buried a bit too deep to even mimic.

"No, man. Just getting started!" His voice sounded far away, like someone else had spoken for him. But to his credit, it did sound like his usual self. Shiro came at him, and Lance once again tried to counter act.

\- - -

The team came back some hours later. Hunk burst into the kitchen, arms full with bags, while Pidge grunted as she dragged a heavy crate behind her. How Pidge ended up with the large crate was anyone's guess, but she'd tied it up with some sort of rope to use as leverage as it squeaked along the floor.

"Man, I can't wait to cook up a feast with all this! Oh, Hey Shiro! Hey, Lance!" Hunk spotted the two at the counter. Shiro was happily sipping tea, while Lance was face planted onto the surface, his arms flopped over his head. "Uhh.. Lance?"

Shiro smiled over the rim of his cup. "He's sulking. How'd the trip go? Good, I wager?"

Pidge huffed as she let the rope drop, sliding into a chair beside Shiro. "You bet. I can't wait to tinker with all this new tech I got. You won't believe the kinds of things all these other species create! Some of it is primitive, but learning about it gives me a whole other understanding of the way they've tried to make life better for themselves. I had to hold back, of course. Allura only gave me so much GAC, and Altean tech isn't compatible with most of the stuff I found, but I'm positive that--" Hunk cut her off by shoving a meat bun in her mouth as he passed by.

"So yeah, anyway! Tonight I was thinking a big healthy dinner with all the Voltron squad. Eating as a family, yanno? Togetherness and all that junk. For tonight's menu, I was thinking we'll start off with some light finger foods, salad and almost-spinach puffs? Work our way to a nice roast? Maybe tarts for dessert?" He keened happily, putting the groceries away into shelves and storage coolers. Pidge, despite having been literally cut off from speech, contentedly ate her bun.

Lance listened to this from within his dark cocoon of misery. A family dinner, warm conversation. This was all up his alley. But something was missing. His heart wasn't fluttering. His body wasn't warming up. Usually just the close proximity of the others gave him all the energy he would need. But it wasn't there. That hole, gaping and crumbling at the edges, was still there.

'Maybe I should be worried', he thought to himself. But that dispassionate uncaring, that numbness was better than going back to the pain of loneliness. So he'd just have to accept it. It was just a lot harder to fake enthusiasm when the well of reference was waning so thin.

'I want to be happy', something in his mind said. But maybe that was just because he thought he should be happy, and not because he actually wanted it.

Lance felt something bounce off his head, he looked up from the shell of his arms to see Hunk grinning at him. He'd apparently flicked some sort of nut at him. "Dude." Lance grumbled, sitting up properly in his seat.   
Hunk grinned and tossed the rest of the handful of nuts into his mouth. Chewing happily, he went back to organizing the kitchen.

"Alright, folks!" He managed through a mouthful of dusty nuts, "Get out of the kitchen. I have a lot of experimenting to do if I wanna get this dinner right." Pidge leapt out of her chair, already done with the meat bun that had been unceremoniously shoved in her mouth. "Works for me. You're a menace in the kitchen anyway." She skipped off into the halls, likely on a bee-line for her lab.

Shiro wandered off without comment, leaving Lance with a sense of being forgotten. He looked back at Hunk, already muttering to himself about what foods could be substituted for this or that. Lance wandered out of the kitchen, and into the empty halls. That hollow feeling from earlier persisted, and although the numbness made him feel no pain, his mind held a sense of danger.   
He decided to seek out Coran. Maybe if he went through the motions of what constituted normal interactions, that vacant feeling would be replaced with normalcy again. 

He found the man in a hallway filled with exposed pipes. "What is this place?" Lance asked with mild curiosity. Coran looked up from his tinkering, a bright smile flashing over his moustached face. Something barely noticeable flickered in his stomach. Maybe delight from being looked upon so fondly? But the flicker was gone so fast he thought he'd imagined it.  
"Well Lance, this here is where all the plumbing goes through before getting filtered and re-used!" He informed with a bubble of mirth in his cadence. He flitted from one screen to another, knocking against pipes to listen for density.

"Oh... uh. Cool. A water treatment plant, then?" He'd walked near one once on Earth. They smelled horrid. But here, the ancient Altean technology seemed to have found a means of neutralizing the smell. 

"Very cool, my young Paladin!" Coran agreed, dismissing the lackluster volume of Lance's reply. "Not a drop of water is wasted!" Lance took a moment to fully process what he was hearing. "Um.. wait, wait. Hold the phone a sec." He held up his hands. "Do we... drink the same water we uh.. yanno..."

Coran pulled at his moustache. "Hm?"

Lance choked. "Um. No. Actually, never mind? I don't wanna know." The lanky teen quickly jogged his way out of the hallway. His attempt at distraction by talking to Coran had proven to be a lot more troubling than he'd been hoping. Maybe Coran's company wasn't always what it was cracked up to be.

With five more vargas before that big dinner, Lance wasn't sure if he could get his stomach to forget what he'd learned today.


	4. Let Go Control

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tension builds as Lance tries desperately to rationalize his feelings and stave off a breakdown. But with a big family dinner right around the corner, keeping it all together might prove impossible.

He missed Hunk. Missed the goofy misadventures they used to get into, even if they were 100% Lance's fault. The casual camaraderie, easy company. At what point had their friendship fallen away to this mild acquaintance thing they had now? Lance peeked into the kitchen, and saw Hunk softly cursing a bowl of dough that he assumed was a failed experiment in fine cuisine. Lance pulled away and slunk back into the hall. His eyes closed, remembering a memory of him giving Lance a high five with a Sentry arm in a Galra base. Their merry banter under the sea on the mermaid planet.  
They were friends. So where was this distance coming from? Lance knew he could walk in, and Hunk would smile and say hi. But maybe he wouldn't. He'd said he needed to be alone with his preparations. Lance was a goofball, not an intellectual equal.

He felt like a stranger. Doubt didn't suit him, but it built itself up like a concrete wall between him and the world.

'Just stay away,' he reminded himself. 'They'll come for you eventually.'

\- - -

The horrid silence was making him feel like he was crazy. No one should be left alone this long. 'But I'm the one staying away'. He told himself. 'It's not their fault, it's mine'. Over and over. Buzzing gnats of worries and grievances bit him and batted against his mind. He couldn't go to the dinner like this. He needed to calm down. He needed that void again, the one that felt like dark sand eating away at the sore redness of the hole in his heart. A dull droning nothingness was easier to hide than a hissing pressure ready to explode.

Distraction. He needed distraction. 

He punched a wall.

The pain shot through his whole arm, making him yelp out a high note only dogs could hear. He hopped on his feet, cradling his roughed up knuckles tightly into his chest. "Stupid, stupid, stupid." He whined, hissing through his teeth. But at least his thoughts had been paused if only for a moment. He started to walk again, sucking at his scraped up knuckles that left a weird copper taste in his mouth. 

He found Shiro walking the other way, giving him a wave and a smile. "Hey Lance! How about another round of training?" Lance scowled over his stinging hand. "I'm not Keith." He ground out bitterly. The look of hurt that passed over Shiro's face made Lance instantly guilt himself over what he'd just said.

"S-sorry." He stammered, rubbing the back of his neck. Shiro schooled his features into forgiveness. "It's fine. I'll see you at dinner, then." Shiro disappeared into another hall, and Lance felt wave after wave of regret and embarrassment wash over him. He'd lashed out at Shiro, his hero, the man who only wanted what was best for the team. And here Lance was, letting bitter resentment over a childish loneliness get the better of him. He stared down at the broken skin on his hand, and felt that maybe he deserved it.

\- - -

Lance breathed in deeply, held it, and breathed out. His breath shook as he did, wavering and unsteady. Dinner was just within this door. A room full of his friends. His friends. Friends. He'd go in, he'd smile, and he would feel better. Hell, he was pretty sure he was making up half of the horrible things he assumed the team thought of him. 

One more breath, and he walked forward. The door hissed open, and he found everyone there. Multiple conversations happening at once. Coran gesturing wildly with a gleam in his eyes. Allura laughing behind a hand. Pidge and Hunk were animated in their own world of all they'd accomplished that day. Shiro saw Lance first, and motioned him over with a smile. 

Lance smiled back and sat down. He felt uneasy. Like he shouldn't be there. He didn't remember what it felt like to have a light heart and a mind that simply let go and moved on.

He started to eat. The food tasted amazing. Nothing familiar, and most of it so strange it was best to pretend it was just weird decorations in order to trick himself into thinking of it as food. But it was food, and edible. He found himself favouring the bread rolls that tasted kind of like butter and gravy.

Conversation wafted over him like the steam of the potted meals in the centre of the table. Warm smiles, laughter, discussions of missions past and beyond. The food in his mouth became ash. His chewing slow and methodical. The words all blurred for a while, but one snippet suddenly sounded out to him; "It's kinda hard to be lonely when you're crammed onto a ship with 6 other people."  
Hard to be lonely.. but, he was lonely. Even surrounded by people, he was achingly lonely. So then why? What was wrong with him? He felt bitter resentment toward someone who could say that so casually. 

He felt something begin to burn behind his eyes.

No. Not here. Anything but that.

Shaking, he set down his fork and slowly pushed his chair back. A stealthy getaway, and he'd be gone before the first tear fell. No one had to know. Everyone was happy. He couldn't ruin this for them. Not when times were so hard. Not when peace was few and far between.

"Lance?"

Conversations died down as he looked back from where he'd walked, only a few feet from his chair. Everyone was staring. "You okay, dude? You barely touched your food." Hunk asked with worry. Things got blurry, his chest shook with effort to breathe normally. Not here. Not here.

"I uh.." His voice was wavering. He needed a lie. He needed a mask. He needed to hide.

Shiro stood up, and Lance felt panic begin to pound against the walls of his control. "You don't look so good. Lemme see.." Shiro was suddenly there in front of him, easily within sight of the unshed tears threatening to escape. A hand reached out towards his forehead.

Panic shattered his resolve like weakened glass.

Lance whipped his hand out, smacking Shiro's hand away and staggering a step back. Gasps filled the air, and several more people were on their feet. No.. no he'd done it. He'd ruined their fun, and he'd left himself entirely exposed. 

"Lance.." Shiro furrowed his brow, and Lance couldn't bear to face the consequences of what he'd done.

"I'm fine. It's fine." He lied, lied, lied. His face was red, he felt sweat pool down his spine. His breath aching within the tightening cage of his chest. "Sorry. I'm so sorry, I just.. Air. I need air. Oh, wow is it stuffy in here or what? All that steam, yanno? Your sure make one heck of a meal, Hunk my man." Stammering and sweating, laughing with an edge of hysteria, he backed toward the door. The telltale hiss of it opening gave him the sign that freedom was just within reach. "Lance, wait--"

Lance ran.


	5. All The King's Horses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro catches Lance before he can make a full getaway, and the lanky teen finally unloads a lot of his bottled up feelings.

_I'm an idiot._

He ran.

_I'm such an ass._

He slid, he bumped walls, and kept booking it. Solid and violent footfalls against the space-age metal under his sneakers. His breaths caught in his chest, too tight and too flooded. He choked, barely able to breathe, on the verge of gagging. His face felt like it was burning under acid. Crying. He was probably crying.

_Pathetic._

Someone grabbed his arm. 

Lance nearly screamed, having been so certain he'd not been followed. He turned and looked up. It was Shiro, eyes wide in concern. "Lance, wait. Okay? Come on." His grip loosened, but he steered Lance into the room he was sure Lance had been running to. 

And so there they stood in the bay of the Red Lion.

Lance heaved a breath, moving from the door and sliding against one of Red's great paws. Shiro cautiously took a seat in front of him. He said nothing at first, letting Lance even out his own breathing, on his own time.

Finally, silence seemed to settle.

"Feeling better?" Shiro asked calmly. Lance nodded dimly. "A little." He rasped through a raw throat. "What happened back there?" Shiro didn't sound at all angry. Not even upset. Just.. curious. Maybe even bordering methodical. Lance could deal with that.

"I um.. I don't know exactly." How did he explain it? Suddenly his problems seemed so complicated. No elevator speech could properly explain away his behaviour at dinner. Silence dragged out. He felt like he owed Shiro an explanation. Something. Anything. 

"Overwhelmed?" At this Lance looked up, meeting Shiro's concerned gaze. "I.. I guess." Lance shrugged. 

Another beat passed, and Lance let out a steady sigh, resolve seeming to come back to him.

"Do.. do you ever.." God, he felt like an idiot. A child. He bit his lip, steeling what nerves were left after the great battle in which half of them had burnt out. "You ever just feel.. like even in a room full of people.. you're just," He gestured vaguely, not meeting Shiro's gaze. He got frustrated with himself as he swam blindly for the words he needed in order to properly illustrate how he'd felt back there.

He gave up on the analogy he'd tried to start, and started a different one. His face burned with embarrassment.

"Okay, so like? Uh.. Shit." He ran his hand through his hair. This was all such a needless mess. His heart ached, still puckered with holes and sandy debris falling from its chasms.

"Start from the top, Lance." He looked up. Shiro looked back at him with patience and kindness. "You're trying to muddle through too much information at once. I can see the smoke coming from your ears. Start at the beginning."

Lance felt calmer, the buzzing in his head fading. There was no judgment in Shiro's smile.

"Right." He let his hand fall from his hair. "I've been.. tired. Of always putting myself out there. And just.. not getting something in return." Pieces that had been scattering around his head like shrapnel in a hurricane began to fall gently into place. Lance swallowed, and kept on. "It's not easy, yanno? In fact, it's humiliating and embarrassing most times. But I'm the one that wants the attention, so I chase, and I chase.. I kept bothering everybody, and getting teased for it." When a worried look from Shiro seemed as if he felt personally guilty for any of the teasing, Lance held out his hands placatingly. "It-it's ok! I honestly don't mind most of the time. Teasing friends is fun. I get a kick out of it. Any reaction is a good one. But.." He settled down again, letting his hands fall to his lap.  
"The teasing.. and everyone making fun of me even when I was being serious? It.. started to feel not so nice." His nervous grimace fell into a resigned frown. "I didn't have the energy.. no, the heart to keep seeking company. So I stopped. I waited.. I waited for someone to come to me for once."

"Lance.." Shiro was beginning to form a picture in his mind. "For how long?"

Lance's head fell further toward his chest. "A few weeks." Silence between them. Lance couldn't bear to look for Shiro's reaction.

"Something... broke. I think. I realized no one would come. No one... wanted to see me. But, I mean. It's okay! I-I get it." He felt frantic again, wanting to jump to the aid of his friends. He wrung his hands nervously in his lap. "They're busy, they have.. they're allowed to have other friends, yanno? A-and I get it. I'm kind of annoying, I don't have anything smart to add to the conversation. I-I um.." He swallowed. Swallowed. His throat felt tight and dry. "They don't owe me anything, so I feel like such an ass for getting this way over it. It's not like they push me away or anything, but I just.. even when we're all together like at dinner, I felt... I felt... Less. I felt like I was less than they are."

His throat closed up. He'd been too honest. He was hollowed out. Exposed. Naked with all his flaws and scars open to be ridiculed and judged.

"Look, Lance.." Shiro interrupted for the first time, not able to bear Lance seeming so cornered. "Your friends, your team.. they may not owe you anything, but that doesn't invalidate how this all makes you feel." Lance felt a wave of fresh air fall over him as his head lifted to look up at Shiro.  
"Lance, you have every right to feel hurt. You're human, kiddo. We all are. Nobody is perfect."

Lance felt open and raw.. but something light seemed to open in his chest. The heavy weight.. slowly lifted. 

"Even in a group.. I should feel something. Warmth. But there was nothing Shiro." Lance decided to keep being honest, to let it all out. Void the worry from his chest. "Normally.. around people, I feel strong. Myself. But there was just this gaping emptiness.. and eventually.. I felt.. Bitter. Against my own friends I felt bitter." His eyes burned again. "How horrible can I be.." He his voice continued, but it sounded watery. ".. to feel that way about my team? My best friend.. That's not--"

"It is, Lance. That is completely human." Shiro smiled anyway, and he grasped Lance's fidgeting hand. Lance didn't want to feel justified, he didn't want to be okay with these dark feelings. He was supposed to be cool. None of this was cool.

"But.. Shiro.." The fight died out, and he slumped his shoulders. 

Shiro had a lot he wanted to say on the subject. A lot of things Lance had said that probably deserved more attention than he could give. He didn't like that he didn't feel equal to the team, or especially as a friend. Even as he thought back to the break down at dinner, he could see where Lance had tried to play off his pain like a joke, and failing miserably. But had it really failed this whole time? How many other slip ups had he hidden with jokes or distraction?

"Come on, Lance. Let's go back." Shiro stood and tried to pull Lance up with him. The walls closed in on Lance, and he tried to free his hand. 

"I-I can't Shiro." Facing them after acting like a mess back there.. after running off. He knew he wasn't being himself. Hell, he'd done lot's of stupid stuff in front of his team. Cringe worthy boasting and unrequited flirting and jokes that fell flat. But he'd been stronger then. He didn't feel strong anymore. That mask, that persona.. it wasn't there to protect him.

"You're embarrassed." Shiro gathered, tugging him up anyway. Lance complied, but he held an arm around himself to create a barrier. "It wasn't as bad as you're making it out to be, Lance. As far as anyone knows you weren't feeling well and needed some air. Heck, even slapping my hand, while alarming, was probably not the faux pas you believe it was."

Maybe. Maybe he was right. 

"I.. you're right." Lance nodded. "But I really don't feel well. For real this time." It was true. His stomach was curdling the little food he'd eaten. 

"That'd be the stress." Shiro smirked, letting Lance go and patting his shoulder. "Hit the showers and go to bed. You'll feel better in the morning."

Lance nodded, and began to sluggishly make his way to his room. Shiro watched him leave the hangar and sighed as he lost sight of him. "I might need to keep a better eye on that kid." He murmured to himself.


	6. The Seventh Wheel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just as he was on the verge of working on his strained relationships on his own, Lance and the team end up on a colony taken over by the Galra. Rumours of the druids' presence has them exercising caution, but...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay an update even though it's not the weekend. I have a few new chapters written already in reserve so I wanted to pop one out there. This is a hefty chapter compared to my other ones, boasting roughly 3000 words or so. Please enjoy!

Far away, in a darkened room lined with purple magic, a figure smirked beneath her hood. A scene unfolding in a floating orb had shown her more than she could have hoped for. She tapped a finger through the image of a lanky boy walking away from her agent. "Interesting..."

\- - -

Lance felt like a stalker. He leered around a corner at Pidge and Hunk chattering at each other in the hall. They looked so happy, and Lance felt a flutter of an urge to join them. He wanted to be a part of it. He liked them, despite the differences between them. When it wasn't always sciencey talk, they had a lot of fun goofing around. If only it were so easy to get them to let loose more often, at least more on his level. It wasn't so great when you felt like most of the fun and jokes your friends made weren't meant for you to understand.

He turned away and leaned against his hidey-wall, breathing in deeply. "Okay, Lance. Talk to your friends. This whole situation of feeling sorry for myself has gone on long enough. Not gunna wait for them anymore. I don't really wanna feel like a third wheel anymore, but you gotta stick with your friends. You can do this. You're a man." He'd slept well the night before after a warm shower and a calming face mask. He still felt raw, a bit stupid for getting so emotional over nothing, but that horrible murky blackness had ebbed. Washed clean, for all he could tell. Maybe that talk with Shiro had helped clear the cobwebs. He was ready to fix the damage he'd done to himself with this silly game he'd created.

With a slap to his cheeks, he readied his nerve and turned to face his friends.

The alarms suddenly blared. Lance might have yelped as he hid behind the wall again before the others caught him there. 

"Paladins! Please come to the bridge in full armour!" Allura's command called over the speakers, and Lance saw Hunk and Pidge rush past the hall he was hiding in. Lance groaned, perturbed that his opportunity of bravery had been interrupted. 

\- - -

Lance was the last to show up on the Bridge. He caught Shiro passing his eyes over him as if looking for reason to be worried. Lance shrugged and moved his gaze to the red screens flashing all around them. 

"Princess, what's the matter?" Shiro's commanding voice stood out, looking for clarification now that all five Paladins were present.

"Disturbing news, Paladins." Allura looked sickened, holding her stomach, but schooling her tight features into some semblance of control. "Coran has just received a distress signal from a nearby colony. They were invaded by Galra some movements ago, and it seems many of their people have gone missing since.." She cleared her throat and continued, "Since a couple of druids joined the Galra forces. I fear the worst."

Lance looked from one team mate to the next. The only one of them looking as unsettled as Allura was Shiro. "Uuhmmm... Are those the magic guys.. you talked about before?" Lance asked with an edge of caution. He didn't want to come off as ignorant, but he'd much prefer to have answers than pretend.

"Yes, Lance." She returned with a grave nod. "They're powerful, using Quintessence as a weapon. But they also have a habit of using living things as experiments."

"Like this.." Shiro held up his robotic arm, and Lance felt his stomach drop with dread. "That being said, we can't let those guys harm anyone else. That colony needs to be freed anyway, but now more than ever."

Agreeing with Shiro, all that was left to do was come up with a plan. Lance suggested just flying down in Voltron and letting loose, but apparently giant robots didn't have the subtlety needed for the delicate extraction of prisoners.  
"Not only that, but blasting away the place without knowing the location of innocents would do more harm than good." Coran added, fiddling with a map he'd managed to make from a basic scan of the colony.

"This sounds like it's gunna be a huge pain in the butt." Lance heaved a sigh. "So.. what then? Go in all sneaky and incognito? Sounds like cool ninja junk." He ended this off with a smirk while crossing his arms. As much as he did feel better than he had been, the persona he was accustomed to showing felt hollow and false. At least it came easily, even if it didn't feel right.

"Yes, and no." Allura turned from the group and added Coran's map to her own screen, enlarging it for all of them to see. "I'd like to draw out a significant amount of the Galra's attention with an attack, which will likely force them to move most of the innocent population into once place. It may prove easier to protect them this way."

Coran nodded as he joined the Princess's side. "Evacuating an entire colony would be impossible, so we need to liberate them somehow. But that's thinking a bit far ahead of ourselves. You'll be doing reconnaissance first, before any real action is taken." He twirled his moustache in concern. "Allura, I know you said you'd join the infiltration team, but..."

"Coran, I must be there to confront the druid should the need arise. I'm the only one of the paladins with the means to contend with offensive Quintessence." Allura tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, clearly nervous about the whole affair but moving on despite it.

"Paladins, let's discuss further details on our way there."

\- - -

Lance growled to himself as he watched most of the team sneak off into the facility without him. As it turned out, the 'plan' was to have a first wave of the team go in as invisible as possible to get a better idea of what was going on inside the building. Although Lance begged to be let on, his pleas were met with doubt. Apparently he wasn't 'subtle' or sneaky' enough. 

Well, at least he had Hunk. 

The two of them, hidden in the green lion, watched the vast desert from relative comfort. Hunk sat worriedly in Pidge's chair, fretting for the safety of the others. Lance took to pacing. 

"I mean, seriously!" Lance bemoaned, ready to rant once again about the indignity of it all, "I'm the sharpshooter! Stealth is my middle name!" Hunk looked back at him from the seat, "Uh.. isn't your middle name--"

"Shush!" Lance emphasized his point with a mime for zipping his lips. Hunk shrugged, "I mean.. you are a little...loud?" Seeing Lance look nearly crestfallen, Hunk tried to back up. 

"Aaah what I mean is energetic! C'mon man, Shiro, Pidge and Allura are like the best choice for this. Besides, they need people out here in case something goes south."

Lance scoffed and crossed his arms. "Without our lions? I get that green has cloaking, but for how long?"

They both breathed a tired sigh and looked back at the screen, seeing nothing but dust and a rusty looking building. "I wonder what the place does, anyway..." Hunk murmured, leaning over and interlacing his fingers with his elbows propped on his thighs. Lance shrugged and picked at his gloves. "I'unno. Sand production?" Somehow that earned a chuckle from Hunk, and Lance felt a tiny bit better about himself as a result.

It sucked not being able to do something, but worse was feeling like he'd been underestimated. He wanted to be needed. He'd be crawling out of his skin if he didn't have Hunk out here too. Still, it'd be nice to at least be able to grip Red's controls and feel the power of his lion in battle if he wasn't going to be putting his shooting skills to use.

"Lance.." Hunk murmured, leaning forward in his seat again. "They're coming out."

A few minutes later, the green lion was full again, but the looks on their team's face told a rather unsettling story once the helmets came off. 

"Experimentation." Pidge gasped after she'd removed the helmet, her short hair a tangled mess. "They're..." She seemed breathless, unable to stomach the words she needed to say. Shiro gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and decided to take up the burden. 

"The druids that landed are using the population as guinea pigs. From what data we could gather, it seems like a lot of it has to do with the mind." He managed to say all this without much trouble, a distance in his eyes that made him horribly unreadable. Lance felt his stomach do a small flip. Shiro, his hero, seemed almost clinical in his delivery of something so unsettling.. 

Allura chimed in now, wiping sweat from her brow in with delicate flick of her long fingers. Her brows were drawn tightly, her blue eyes deep and angry. "It's awful. The worst I've ever seen. Domination and violence is horrid enough.. but the things we saw in that facility.. It was along the lines of manipulation I've only ever seen from... The non-cogs in that wretched alternative universe." She breathed in deeply, gathering her nerves back in order. "Some of those prisoners, from the videos we did see, had been stripped bare of all emotion. Others seemed to have singular emotions fixated and amplified to unbearable levels. I simply don't understand what purpose this could serve the empire?"

Hunk looked nauseous as he watched this, hiding behind the seat with his eyes poking behind it, like a child watching a horror movie. "Woah.. this is messed up. Like, there's war and battles and stuff. But this? Messing with people's brains? And they're not even enemy soldiers, just innocent civilians!" 

Shiro spoke up once again, "We're all rattled by what we've learned, but we can't ruminate too heavily on it now. Let's focus on freeing this colony. Pidge, any ideas?"

"Yeah. Thankfully, they have all the citizens locked in one section of the building deep in the basement. Honestly, the best plan is to attack the Galra from up here and work our way down. It's 87% sentries anyway. The flesh and blood soldiers and scientists will be more difficult to deal with, but there's not enough of them for it to be a big problem. My biggest concern is I have no idea where the druids are and how many we're up against. They're the wild card." Having something else to focus on gave a little more colour back to Pidge's pallor. 

"Is there any way to get most of them to come to us?" Hunk asked, coming out from his chair-shield. "If we can avoid getting separated in that building, there's less of a chance of one of us getting trapped by the druids. I say we stay up on the surface, make a huge commotion, and wait for the sentries to come."

Allura nodded slightly, tapping her lip with a finger in thought. "That would be ideal; the inside of that facility is a terrific maze. Too easy to get split up. But how will we prevent them from sending out a distress call to any Galra fleets nearby once we start our assault?"

Pidge tapped at her wrist plate, bringing up a screen with a string of data. "There's a communications hub not far from here, and several relay points around the desert. If we can take them out, it should put a big dent in their ability to call for help. At least for a few varga, anyway."

Lance's gaze flicked from one team mate to the other, looking for an opportunity to give his own ideas, some way to feel useful or be a part of this grand rescue plan. But his brain was a void, bringing up nothing but echoes of his friends input bouncing along the walls of his mind. How did they come up good ideas on the first go? They were naturals at this. All he could do was make wild guesses until something stuck. He felt left behind. Hopelessly behind. What had he been doing wrong that his peers did right? Pidge and Hunk went to the same school, but he felt miles behind them. 

Lance caught Shiro's eye, who seemed to be regarding him with some degree of concern. Lance looked down at himself and realized he was holding himself a little too tightly. He loosened his posture to appear more relaxed, even if the correction was a bit late to go unnoticed.

"Let's head back to the castle. Pidge's cloaking isn't going to hold much longer. We'll return in our lions, take out those relay points simultaneously, and come back together again, ready to fight." Shiro rested his hands on his hips, giving Pidge a nod. She slid back into her chair and began the trip home. 

\- - -

They took out the communication stations with the lions a varga later. A minimal amount of fighter crafts came to attack them, but after only taking out a dozen, they stopped coming. Landing their lions, the team waited for something. Anything.

"No one is coming out. Did they run out of fighters? Do you think they'll use the prisoners as leverage?" Hunk asked worriedly from the yellow lion. 

"Be on your guard, everyone." Allura commanded from Blue. "I think they mean for us to come to them. This is less than ideal."

It was true. They'd hoped to avoid going inside. 

After some discussion, the paladins left their lions and headed as a group towards the facility's entrance. None of them liked it, but obvious risks came with the territory when it was do or die. The people of this colony were in grave danger, and giving up wasn't an option.

They were halfway between the lions and the base when loud whirring noises surrounded them. From the open hanger doors under the desert floor, came pillars of metal. They opened after reaching a general height of seven or ten feet high, and out of them poured troops. Sentries, mostly. There may have been a few generals mixed in to give orders. They were surrounded. 

Lance felt small and boxed in. The paladins stood back to back, forming a small tight circle. There was no clean way out of this. "What do we do, guys?" Hunk hollered, bringing up his bayard's summoned form. "Head back to the lions? Fight?"

The sentries gave them no choice. They all began firing and coming forward. Lance and Hunk fired back, trying to avoid the myriad of plasma bullets hailing around them. Allura used her whip to take out small lines of the soldiers that got too close. Pidge took out ankles in a similar manner. Shiro leapt into the fray with a shield on one arm and his glowing arm cutting up bots as fast as he could. Arial dives and rolls, the man was an efficient machine of destruction. 

Lance tried to ignore how tight his chest felt, the air difficult to breathe in the confines of his helmet. Keeping calm was not an option anymore. Things seemed horribly hopeless.

But then shots rained down from above. The castle, descending from the upper atmosphere, was here to help.

Large swaths of sentries were going down. In the chaos, the paladins were separated. Coran was heard over their coms, pleading for them to gather at the lions so he didn't accidentally shoot anyone down. The dust that had kicked up from the fighting and the wind that had picked up made visibility horrendously limited, forcing them to use their scanners as a main means of visual communication.

"I'm in Green!" Pidge yelled from the comms. 

"Allura, we have to evac! There's no way we can save anybody without a better plan." Shiro called out.

"I agree. Boarding Blue, now."

Lance searched his scanners for Red's location, trying to head there and keep the random sentries that fired at him at bay. His mind was being pulled in several different directions.

"Help!" Hunk cried out, "I-I'm kinda freaking out, here. There's too many!"

Lance gasped, horror ripping through his fear. "Hunk!" He desperately scanned his displays for that warm yellow dot. "I'm comin', buddy!" 

"Lance!" Shiro's voice, "I'm in Black, heading to Hunk's location. I'll get him, so please focus on getting safely in your lion."

As his heart was beating so painfully in his chest, Lance feared he was suffering a medical emergency. He was torn in several different directions, priorities mixing and flying in a wind tunnel of glass shards. His worry for Hunk, Shiro's orders, Red's presence gnawing at his mind, and bullet after bullet pinging against his armour, past his helmet, at his feet. 

"Lance!" Shiro's voice again, but just as Lance tried to gather his wits enough to answer him, the ground vanished under his feet.

Time slowed down. His limbs felt both heavy and weightless. Metal blurred past him, and the sandstorm had gone away in the blink of an eye. As time started to once again alight itself, his stomach pulled painfully. His back bounced off of a stair, or a ramp. Something hard and metal. He flipped, turning in midair and felt the right side of his body knock into something else. He couldn't see anything; his senses shutting down as adrenaline prevented any major pain and panic. At least for now. It was just bare bones sensations. One at a time.

His tumbling reached its end as he slid into what might have been a wall or a large containment bin. His eyes were squeezed shut and his joints clenched tight with stress. He took a long few minutes before he even tried to right himself.

The first thing he noticed as his senses came back was that he'd lost his helmet during his break up with gravity. Opening his eyes, he scanned his surroundings to find he must have fallen into one of the large hangers that held the fighter crafts. Breathing was difficult. His armour took the brunt of his tumble, yet he felt as if someone was standing on his chest. 

"Lance!" He gasped tightly and looked up from where he lay. Coming down the ramp was Shiro. He must have left his lion to come help him. Lance tried to stand, his arms buckling under his weight as he attempted to push himself up. This shouldn't have been so difficult, but it felt like holding his upper body up was as strenuous as trying to lift a refrigerator. 

Something stepped in front of him, or rather it simply seemed to exist there suddenly. He heard Shiro's steps falter and stop. Lance's focus was waning, making it hard to concentrate on Shiro, the robed figure nearby, and his attempts to rise all at once. So he slid back down and let his eyes drift up instead.

And there it was. That was a druid. He could feel the dark crackle of energy at their feet. It wasn't looking at him, rather the mask seemed pointed toward Shiro. 

"Get away from him." Shiro growled, his right arm glowing with a menacing purple. A second druid appeared, kneeling right next to Lance's head. The teen stared at the expressionless mask with a horrid weight of dread settling in his gut. He heard Shiro's furious footsteps rushing towards them. Flashes of light and electricity danced and pierced around them all, and the druid closest to Lance laid a hand gently on his forehead. It's hand was cold like ice, the threads of magic that danced over it's nails soaked into Lance's head, making his eyelids fall heavily.

He heard Shiro call again, sounding desperate. It was the last he heard of him before a flash of magic took himself and the druids somewhere far, far away.


	7. Broken Strings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance is half conscious as he is taken by the druids to their lab. Whatever tenuous control he'd had on his emotions over the last few weeks is nothing compared to...

Chapter 7 - Broken Strings

Lance started to come to as lights rhythmically passed him by. He felt his body bounce softly with each step the stranger carrying him took. His eyes fluttered, trying in vain to open. He felt groggy, in a stage that slipped between sleep and awareness. They must be walking down a hallway, but he couldn't remain lucid enough to make himself get a better look at his surroundings, or his captors. 

A door shut, maybe behind him somewhere. The person carrying him stilled. 

"The others?" Asked a raspy voice somewhere further off. "Gone." Murmured his captor. 

"Set him down." The one holding him moved further into the room, and laid him out on something that felt firm, but somewhat pliant; like an overstuffed pleather couch or something. It wasn't heaven, but it beat metal tables or torture chairs. He felt a pair of soft, thin hands gently touch either side of his head, fingers smoothing over his temples. It was relaxing, which although his head felt scrambled, Lance was sure relaxed was the last thing he was supposed to feel right now. 

His team was supposedly 'gone', he'd been taken prisoner by druids, and Team Voltron had utterly failed to save the innocent people of this colony. Yeah, definitely not supposed to feel at ease right now. But any guilt or despair he should feel was somehow quelled by the gentle touch of a stranger's fingers. 

"Put your thoughts to rest." Coo'd the voice above him, "Your mind is in chaos, young Paladin. Emotional turmoil, doubt, a fading self confidence.. "

Did this woman know him? She sounded female, although very old. Not of a cadence he recognized. "Where did it all go wrong for you, I wonder?"

The soft glow he could see from under his eyelids changed. Spotting black, blue. Dots of white. Flashes of red. Colours twirling and spinning, making him lose focus on what was happening outside of his own mind.

Memories surfaced, but along with those images, the feelings, emotions he had seemed to have rose stronger than the memory recalled.

He watched Keith's back as he left the castle for the last time, and felt his heart sink as a friend, a rival, an equal, left him.

He watched as his team, reunited with Matt, walked toward the castle. He felt envy, jealousy, rip through his throat.

He recalled nights and days alone, playing video games in a dark room, only called upon once to help the Alteans get a snack. He felt apathy, then a sudden feeling of purpose to show off a skill, followed by a sudden drop as he watched his alien friends flee.

He saw Hunk, Matt and Pidge talk about projects with glee, as Lance stood aside feeling useless. He felt a deep boned depression sink into his pores, feeling isolated even with people he knew and loved.

Shiro flashed in his mind, kindness and strength in his eyes. Admiration flushed over him warmly, followed by a creeping distance that pulled him further and further away from being able to reach his hero. He felt like less, as if Shiro only saw him as a weak thing, a flawed thing, despite how badly Lance needed Shiro to view him otherwise. Lance wanted to prove himself. He wanted to be better.

When he once again became aware of his body, it was as though he'd been turned upside down, spun in circles and asked to stand perfectly still when let down. He was glad he was already laid flat, because he was two seconds from throwing up if asked to move. Every negative feeling he'd had over the last couple weeks were growing strong and violent, rattling his mind and making his nerves fray. 

"You wish to belong." The voice sounded closer, and he felt soft threads of hair tickled his cheeks.

He did. She was right. He wanted to find his place, and feel assured of it. Not hanging by a thread, but supported on a sound foundation. He was a Paladin of Voltron, the pilot of the Red Lion, the sharpshooter. 

Or at least.. he thought he was. But even with all that.. what else was there? Under the titles.. what.. was there? A Paladin for being at the right place at the right time. Pilot to Red, because Blue shut him out. Sharpshooter... but they didn't even need one. They fought well without him. In fact, they rarely required his help in a fight, getting to the enemies he targeted well before he pulled the trigger.

He'd simply been playing hero like a child plays house.

Emptiness started to drain away hope and purpose from his resolve. A deep grained ache began to eat away at the vaguely patched hole he'd tried to mend in his heart. Had he even earned a single one of those titles? Or was he simply a fill in. A joke. A nothing. A sham. 

His nerves became agitated, his fingers twitching and his brows tensing together. Something horrible was happening to him, and the trauma of it was making his body tremor. He knew whatever the figure was doing was tampering with something important deep inside his mind.

"You don't belong with Voltron." Magic seemed to seep into his veins, burning as it sought the threads of his bonds. "You don't fit into place."

He heard Iverson yelling at him. Felt the shame stain his soul. He'd never compare. He'd never be better than what he was. He'd always be average, or worse, below even that. He fought, and he trained, and he tried. Who he was could never be good enough as is. 

He felt the wings of his desires snap in half. It stole the breath from his lungs, stole the light from his soul. He felt himself fall.

Gentle hands left his head, and the cold air felt frigid against his once warm temples.

"We're done here."

\- - -

"....Lance? Lance, can you hear me? Please, wake up, buddy." 

Lance slipped back into the waking world, his limbs heavy, his mind a slow ooze. He opened his eyes, and had to work hard to get them to focus on the face above him. It was Shiro, patting his cheek with a gloved hand. "Hey there we go, champ. Keep those eyes open, Lance. Stay with me." 

"Shiro?" His voice sounded faint, distant. Like his vocal chords didn't have the power to do more that push a breathy sound from his throat. Shiro helped him sit up, and Lance found his weight sliding into his leader's chest despite his efforts to do otherwise. 

"It took ages to find you. The team is trying to fight off a fleet without us. We gotta go help them. Can you stand, Lance?"

The team.. the lions.. the mission. Lance's brows pinched together. There was too much to keep track of, and his mind seemed unable to multi task. So he focused on the last order; stand.

Lance shifted with Shiro's help, edging himself off the padded table he'd been napping on. His feet touched the floor, and he eased himself into holding his own weight as he stood. He was tired, exhausted. It didn't make sense. He felt like he'd slept an eternity. 

"Okay, we gotta book it. I took out a lot of soldiers, but more will be on their way. Let's go." Shiro led him by the upper arm, pulling Lance to the door and out into the hall. Lance quickly found his balance and was now able to jog alongside Shiro through the maze of downed bots. Lance felt questions lick the back of his mind, but the words never made it past the filter of his consciousness. Vague worries, inquiries. They all seemed to break apart before he could bother with them.

His mind had apparently wandered a long time. before he knew it, they were climbing a ramp up to the surface. The Black Lion stood proudly at the top, its mouth gaping open for Shiro to enter. Lance could hear a great battle happening in the atmosphere above them.

"I'll drop you off at Red's location, then we have to get the others and retreat." 

Lance followed Shiro inside, but stayed near the jaw's entrance to be ready to leave. Soon enough, Black leapt toward Red some hundred yards off, and Lance made a bee-line for his Lion.

And was met with a solid wall of red.

Lance stopped, his stomach plummeting.

"No.."

Horror ripped at his flimsy mind. An echo of a barrier from only months ago overlaying his vision in a blur of heart broken tears.

"No!"

Shiro came out of his own Lion and stared up in confusion. "Lance... why would the Red Lion shut you out?"

_Sham. Fake. Fill In. Average._ Words he'd heard in that odd dream state flashed behind his eyes in a violent stream. Every bone in his body turned to liquid. He felt to his knees, boneless as if the strings that kept him up had severed.

Shiro cursed behind him, and seemed to be relaying the situation to the team. Lance felt the man pull him to his feet, practically dragging him back to Black. "No.. Shiro, w-we can't leave Red." Maybe it was a mistake. Maybe an illusion. He'd just try talking to Red. But he couldn't even feel him. Not a trace of the fire that used to reside in the back of his mind, or in the cockles of his heart. A heart he knew had been disintegrating for some time now.

Red knew he was a shell of his former self. Knew how doubtful the pilot was, how weak and feeble he could be. Red needed Keith. The team needed Keith. Lance could never be Keith.

\- - -

Shiro set Lance down on the floor by the control panel. He looked into the boy's blue eyes, and found nothing. Lance had become completely catatonic. Shiro felt a sharp pang of worry and guilt in his throat. How could he have let this happen? Lance had only been a few feet away. He should have made it before they vanished.

A small headache began to build behind his eyes.

Shiro bit down his guilt and switched to leader mode. His feelings could wait.

"Hunk, bring down yellow and tow Red out of here. When we get back into the upper atmosphere, we need to make a break for it. Coran? Ready a wormhole as soon as it's safe to do so." Shiro called out orders, pushing controls like it was second nature.   
Druids had taken Lance, and now the younger paladin was unable to bond with his lion. It wasn't hard to figure out who was responsible. But was this a crime of opportunity? Or had this all been elaborately set up? Had Lance been the intended Target?

Questions for later, when the team could breathe. For now, it was time to book it out of here.

\- - -


	8. Rabbit Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance and the gang returns to the Castle of Lions. The aftermath of Lance's encounter with the druids starts to rear its head.

Lance walked a few paces behind Shiro down the Black Lion's ramp. He couldn't recall the journey back to the castle. He barely remembered anything after being pulled away from Red. There was a nervous energy in his chest that made it impossible to relax, yet his mind simply could not focus on the world outside his own head. 

One step in front of the other, mechanically, his vacant gaze pointed somewhere on the floor. 

"Lance!" Hunk called out, rushing into the Black Lion's hanger, along with Pidge and Allura. "Oh man, when Shiro said you were taken by the druids I was so worried." He reached the Black and Blue paladins gasping for breath. He must have run all the way from Yellow's hanger. "Lance?"

Lance blinked, managing to lift his gaze up to Hunk's worried expression. Whatever the bigger man saw wasn't good. "Bud.." He moved to approach Lance, a hug, or to maybe hold his shoulders or check him for injury. But Lance stepped back and out of reach. His nerves were on fire. He felt agitated, scared, ashamed. He felt like something might strike him if he didn't stay wary. His heartbeat was so rapid it was practically humming.

Hunk gulped back any more words he might have offered his best friend, his own heart clenching at the horrid wrongness that veiled Lance. Lance wasn't supposed to be timid. He wasn't supposed to look so vacant.. haunted.

A heavy silence fell over them, thick and nauseating. 

"Well.." Allura interjected after a moment, "I should go activate the worm hole. We need to put more distance between us and this galaxy." She cast a glance at Lance, and then fled. 

"I'm going to bed." Lance murmured with a shaking voice, already moving past his team. "Lance, wait. You're going to need medical attention. At least stop by the infirmary to rest. Coran will want to look you over." Shiro's concern was met with a half hearted shrug as Lance kept moving forward, holding his arms close to his body and over his chest plate.

He left a baffled and hopelessly worried team behind him.

\- - -

Something was rattling in his chest as he changed out of his armour. Anxiety or some similar thing that kept him on edge. Breathing was difficult, and his mind sporadically flipping through the events of the day in vicious vortexes of thought. Even though he wanted nothing more than to stay in his room with the lights off, he instead changed into his casual clothes and headed to the infirmary. 

He felt cold, like the sort of cold where you couldn't stop trembling even with several layers on. By the time he made it to the large white room, Coran and Shiro were already there. From what he could make out from the tail end of their hushed conversation, Shiro was filling the man in on his end of things concerning the rescue.

"Lance!" Coran moved over to him as Lance walked in, his arms still clutching around himself in a feeble attempt to stop himself from trembling. "I don't feel so good.." He managed to admit this despite wishing to pretend it all away. His fear was making him too honest.

Coran ushered him to a bed to sit on, and immediately began scanning him. "Hmm.. heart rate is nowhere close to normal.. All physical symptoms seem to be a result of your tumble down on the surface, and perhaps stress or anxiety." 

"Can you tell us if the druids did anything, Coran?" Shiro worried that anything 'magic' related would be a lot harder to pinpoint. 

"Well, I certainly won't say they did nothing." Coran turned off his scan, and leaned down to better look Lance in the eyes. "Can you tell us what happened? Do you remember anything? Shiro told us he found you unconscious." 

Lance tried to think back to his time there. He had trouble keeping his mind focused. It was like trying to count a humming bird's wings while it was in flight.

"I got carried somewhere.. I remember cold hands on my face.. but I dunno... Most of the time I was just lost in my own head." A particularly violent tremor ripped through his body, causing Shiro and Coran to flinch back. Shiro found a blanket and draped it carefully over Lance's shoulders.

"Can you recall what you might have been thinking about? Maybe the druids were using your mind to get information." Shiro sat himself down on an opposite bed, hands folded together under his chin. Coran brought up a larger screen to better sort through the scan's data.

"No.. I dunno.." The more he tried to remember, the more it seemed to give him a horrendous headache. Lance leaned over, holding his forehead in his hands. "I'm sorry. I-I can't focus. Everything's all jumbled together."

Coran gave a weary smile. "Perhaps your scrambled head is the reason the Red Lion was unable to communicate with you." Lance wasn't sure about that. He honestly didn't want to touch that topic with a ten foot pole. It hurt too much.

"Scans of your brain are showing heightened activity in this area right here.." He pointed to an image, which Shiro squinted at in thought. "I'm no Pidge, but I think that's the amygdala. It's responsible for processing emotion.. and fear. It might also be affecting the hippocampus, which regulates memory and spatial awareness. They're very close together in the central part of the brain." Lance didn't care to dwell on why Shiro knew anything about brain science. He was already beyond perfect. Lance was starting to resent the guy a little.

Coran nodded, scratching under his moustache. "Allura did say the druids were experimenting on the mind, as I recall. They must have jumped on the chance to test their research on a member of Voltron."

Lance was taking all this talk with a grain of salt. He was 5 seconds away from either puking, passing out, or maybe both. Coran seemed to see this about to happen on his screen, apparently it was a live feed of his fudged up brain.

"Lance, it may not be cozy, but please lay down and sleep, if you can." He patted the pillow at the head of the bed. "Just for tonight. I want to keep a close eye on you." 

He wanted to be alone. He wanted to curl up and disappear. But he laid down anyway, curled on his side, his fingers clutching the blanket tighter around him. Shiro moved to find a softer, heavier blanket to add. The flimsy shock blanket wasn't conducive to a good night's sleep. 

Mercifully, Coran lowered the lights using a control on his floating screen. Lance closed his eyes, half listening to the murmurs of Coran and Shiro pondering his fate. The nausea did not mix well with his ramped up heart rate, but he tried to be patient, focusing instead on his breathing. He tried slowly to ease his panicked, shallow breaths into longer ones. It took a long time.

Shiro laid a cold robotic hand on his head. "I'll go fill the others in. You rest up, kiddo. Don't worry.." He leaned down, and Lance opened his eyes and met Shiro's dark gaze fixed on him. "We'll get you fixed up. You and Red." After giving his hair a ruffling Lance had no energy to defend against, Shiro left the room.

Coran remained silent, supposedly trying to encourage Lance to sleep by deferring from his usual chatter.

Despite needing it badly, Lance did not sleep.

\- - -

Coran left eventually, and Shiro came back in. The older man took a seat near the bed and poked at the lump of blankets that housed Lance. "Coran says you can't sleep." Lance huffed, his body and mind still unable to settle, and that queazy feeling from his stomach making his anxious thoughts nearly become triggers of losing his lunch.

Lance peeked out from the mound he'd been encased in. Why was Shiro in here bothering with him? Lance was nothing but a burden to the team. Not a pilot anymore, barely a soldier. He'd frozen on that battlefield. He wouldn't have been captured if he'd just calmed down and followed orders.

"What do you want?" Lance didn't mean for his question to sound so mean, but now that it was out, maybe it reflected exactly how he felt after all. Bitter. At himself? At the others? He didn't know. Maybe both.

Shiro frowned, taken slightly aback by the attitude. "You've had a very tough day, and a close call with the druids. I just want to make sure you're doing ok."

"And if I'm not?"

Shiro gave a wry smile. "Then I would understand you most right now, don't you think?"

Lance supposed he had a point. But he also doubted Shiro ever felt unsure of himself or his place in the universe. Lance rolled onto his back, dropping an arm over his eyes. "I'm not gunna lay here and whine about it to you, Shiro."

"Why not? It might make you feel better?"

"Or it'll make you see me badly." Lance let his arm slide off his face, resting it by his head. "I've overshared with you too much already. Remember yesterday?"

"Clearly." Shiro replied, still so insufferably patient. "I'm starting to think you locking all those feelings up was the cause of that big outburst a dinner, yeah? So maybe you need to be a little more vocal about what bothers you." 

"Or maybe I need to be a lot less annoying, and be more useful around here." His heart rate rose again, pounding in his rib cage like a wild animal. He felt himself getting upset, and it was nearly impossible to quell it. He didn't want to explode and take it all out on Shiro. He wasn't a loose cannon. He didn't want to be.

"Lance, I don't--"

Lance sat up suddenly, clutching his stomach in an attempt to keep the surging urge to vomit in place. "Shiro, I-I can't do this anymore. I can't pretend to be the hero the universe needs. I screw up every task I'm given. I don't have any talents that help you guys. I can't even pilot Red anymore. Do you get it? That's two lions who've rejected me!" 

"Rejected? No, Lance, that can't be it." Shiro's brows up arching into his hairline in surprise. He was getting a clear picture of what was troubling Lance. 

"What else could it be!?" Lance hissed, bringing a hand to his mouth. 

Shiro's human hand was on his back, holding the boy steady. "Easy, buddy. Don't make yourself sick. Steady.." 

Lance had so much more to say. But he was near gagging with the onslaught of threatening sobs, and the stress and anxiety that had plagued his body all day. As he allowed himself to drop the long list of flaws he had on himself, one gleaming desire burned through all others.

"Shiro..." Lance whispered, shame burning his cheeks, "I'm... I wish I could go home."

Home. Home was the only place in the universe where he could feel normal. Where when he stepped through the door, someone would be there with a big smile on their face, warmth in their eyes. Where he was himself, truly himself, and he never felt the need to compromise.   
Home, where his neighbourhood housed average people. No soldiers fighting space aliens, no phenomenal geniuses; a place where he could be just... him. Normal. 

Awful. He'd never wanted to be normal. Not in his life. He'd wanted to be somebody special. He'd become a Paladin, but he felt lower than common filth. Was there no place in this universe where Lance was okay just as he was?

Shiro stayed quiet for a long while, the warmth of his hand on Lance's back steady and solid. Lance felt his rattling heartbeat taper off into something slightly normal.

"Don't give up Lance." He finally murmured after many minutes passed them by. Lance's features screwed up in confusion. That had not been the response he'd expected. Lance looked over at the leader of Voltron with a mind that was willing to listen.

"This has been a very hard day for you. A very hard few weeks if we count your little dinner escapade. But you're one of the most versatile and adaptable people I know. You're not feeling well, and you're stressed. There's a lot of difficult problems you have to face, but you will never face them alone." Shiro gave him a warm smile that made his heart lurch. "Your team has your back, and so do I."

Lance gave a soft nod. "Oh.. okay, Shiro." He wasn't sure if he could allow himself to believe any of what he'd heard, but somehow.. hearing it all.. Lance felt a tiny bit stronger. He felt seen. Known. Acknowledged. The noise in his head ebbed off. Shiro had spoken with such conviction, it was hard not to take the words to heart no matter his doubts.

Shiro winced, and rubbed his forehead. "Shiro?" The man waved it off and stood. "Nothing. Sudden headache. I probably need to sleep too. Speaking of..?"

"Yeah.. I'll try and sleep." Lance settled a little deeper into the pillow under his head. He felt he might have better luck. His trembling was calmer, and his heart seemed... less jagged. 

"Shiro?" Lance rolled to his side, furrowing his brows. "Um.. thank you."

Shiro gave a smile from over his shoulder. "You're welcome Lance."

Lance watched him go. That horrid unease ebbed, but something inside him would not settle. It was as if every emotion was waging a vicious war inside his mind, trying to win dominance over him. Still, he'd take this opportunity to try and get some sleep. After all, the pillow he had right now was very, very comfortable.


	9. My True Colours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance's condition gets worse. His friends try to help.

Unstable. That was the word that properly explained how Lance felt now. He woke up with that word on his tongue, felt the ever present tightness in his chest, the bees in his veins, and the distortion in his ears. Still unable to feel settled, to feel safe, to feel at ease. He wasn't sure how long he'd slept. Not sure if he'd slept at all. But as he woke, the door hissed open, and Coran stepped into view.

"Good morning, my boy!" He greeted him with the same enthusiasm he always did, chipper and optimistic. Lance wasn't in the mood for quirky uncles who were also morning people. Lance growled and pulled the blanket over his head.

"Ah, not quite awake, I see? Sorry, Lance, but I'm going to need you to sit up for another scan. Druids are dangerous sorts! Let's nip whatever this is right in the bud!"

Lance groaned, pushing himself up and letting the heavy blanket slid off his broad shoulders. His eyes felt dry. He swore he could feel the bags tugging under his lids. He'd been a mess yesterday, but today he felt worse. Like he was angrier, more bitter. Like something died inside of his heart.

Letting his legs hang over the side of the bed, Lance sat with shoulders hunched as Coran ran a diagnostic on him. 

"Hm..." His brows furrowed, and his gaze dropped some of the gleam of optimism he'd danced in with. "No good. It seems your brain has gotten worse."

"Wow, thanks." Lance groaned. He could just hear the jokes the others could make over that bit of information. 

"Lance? Are you quite alright?" Coran was worried. Lance knew he cared. But something in him couldn't summon any empathy. He didn't care if Coran cared for him. Lance was angry. Lance was bitter.

These feelings.. they were awful. Foreign. Like they didn't belong to him. He wanted to crawl out of his skin just to escape them. He dug his nails into the sheets, the tension in his nerves building endlessly with no release.

"I'm sorry, Lance. I'm just not sure what I'm dealing with here.. perhaps the Princess might help. Perhaps she can alleviate the pressure all that mutated quintessence is putting on your.. what was it? Hippo Camper and Enigma? Was that right?" Lance wanted to correct him, but even he couldn't remember the proper names. He instead focused on the suggestion itself. Allura, and her ability to use magic.

Allura was after all, pretty damn magical. She healed an entire planet once. Lance wasn't sure how he felt about it. He knew if he felt more like himself, he'd jump at the chance for a hands on interaction with her. But as he was, he felt like one mis-timed hand on his skin might make him lash out. He was too high strung and ready to snap.

Coran frowned at the agitated rise and fall of Lance's vitals. "Let me give you a mild sedative. It should help relax your muscles, at least." Lance nodded. 

\- - - 

To his great relief, the sedative worked. It had been a drink that looked like nunvill... and tasted worse. After nearly spitting it up right on Coran, Lance managed to gulp the whole thing down, and after a few minutes he felt the tension in his nerves ease up. His stomach, however, was still a roiling time bomb of stress induced damage.

He now sat with Hunk in the kitchen, while the big guy kept trying to entice Lance to eat breakfast. He fussed like a mother hen, pouting like a toddler, and pleading like a father who was on his last leg. "C'mon, Man. I know you don't feel well, but if you don't eat, you're gunna wither to nothing. You're a walking twig already!" The man held out a spoon filled with soup, his nerves making it wobble precariously as he tried to hover it towards Lance.

Lance was certain anything he tried to stomach would end up on the floor anyway, so why put himself through it? He was maybe acting a little bit more petulant than was necessary, he'd admit. He still super did not care.

Leaning back in his seat with both hands on his upset stomach, Lance side eyed the door as it hissed open. Pidge jogged in, followed by Allura and Shiro.

"He won't eat, Shiro!" Hunk tattled with a whine. Shiro cast a concerned glance at the sullen figure haunting the dining room chair. "Lance, don't be difficult." He scolded, but it didn't seem to come with any heat, as if he wasn't about to pressure Lance to behave anyway.

Pidge set her laptop down on the table and crawled on top of the surface alongside it. Hunk complained it was poor table manners. Pidge politely informed him she didn't give a hoot.

"I was researching what Coran sent me from Lance's scans, and did some research on Neuroscience from a database I had on my computer." Lance didn't want to know why she had such a database. These bookish types were really getting on his nerves with their overachieving.

"Pidge, if I have to sit here and listen to more brain science mumbo jumbo, I'm gunna puke on you, _and_ your computer." The threat made Hunk gasp in horror, and moved the steaming bowl of soup away from him like a mother protecting her child. Pidge levelled a withering glare at Lance and moved on.

"Long story short, whatever the Druids did overstimulated the part of your brain that processes emotion, and by proxy it might have an effect on the part of your brain that helps with memory and spatial awareness. I'm not sure what the effects will be for the latter yet, since you seem to be okay on that front _so_ far; save for the stomach issues... But this bad mood of yours is going to last a long, long time unless we get you stabilized."

"And how are we to do that?" Allura chimed in, fretting her bottom lip with worry. Lance thought of Coran's suggestion, but couldn't bring himself to commit to voicing it. 

"Have you tried seeing Red yet today?" Asked Shiro, "Yesterday might have been a fluke, after all."

So they all walked to the Red Lion's hanger. The barrier remained up.

"Wow, Shiro. Great idea. Let's just rub this whole mess in my face again." Lance's sharp comment made everyone uneasy. Lance glared at their fidgeting forms, feeling every horrid urge to do them harm crawl and claw at his brain. 

"Lance is still emotionally unstable." Pidge spoke up, her arms crossed as she considered the lion like a math equation that was simply being obstinate. "I feel like Red isn't responding because Lance's focus isn't there. Well.. _focus_ maybe isn't the right word." A jibe was waiting on her tongue. He could see it. And he waited with baited breath so he could counter right back. 

But Allura cut in.

"This makes sense. If Lance is unsure of himself, or as you say, he simply cannot gather his wits.. it's possible Red's baseline temperament would be disinclined to obey. It's a most fussy sort of being, after all."

Keith wouldn't have this issue, right? He was sometimes uncertain of some things; things Lance recalled gently pushing him to overcome, but the base of his resolve had always been pure and true. Lance.. well. Perhaps this whole situation was a long time coming. Maybe Lance wasn't meant for any of this. Despair hurtled over his consciousness, and he felt his shoulders sag as anger and bitterness collapsed under it's weight. Heavy sadness flooded behind his eyelids. Crushing hopelessness dropped like a stone in his heart. 

He was feeling emotions ten times more intensely than a normal human could ever be expected to endure.

"Stop talking about me like I'm not here. I'm not a science experiment." He grumbled wetly, trying in vain to keep the horrible truth of his feelings out of his voice. He felt Shiro's hand on his shoulder, squeezing gently and leaving it there. Lance didn't shrug him off. For now.

"Sorry about that. We're just brainstorming here. We'll include you in the conversation, Lance." He gave a knowing look to Allura and Pidge, who both looked at Lance with troubled eyes. Lance's own gaze was fixed on the floor, a valiant attempt to hide himself from them.

Hunk growled unhappily, kicking at a wall in frustration. "Dangit. What's with those druids though? Is this their way of trying to take down Voltron? Or are they just messing with us?" 

Allura sighed, "We could play guessing games all day, but I fear it brings us no closer to an actual answer. All we need to do right now is focus on helping Lance." She gave him a soft smile, even though he still seemed determined to burn a hole in the floor with his eyes. "I want to try something, Lance. If I may."

He looked up, and gave a heaving sigh as he realized she was probably hoping to try her hand at using magic. "Fine. But just... I'm a little touchy about the magic stuff. Dunno if you noticed, but I'm in this mess cause of evil space wizards to begin with."

Allura looked mildly perplexed, but seemed to gather what he meant through the context. "Of course.. I'll be as gentle as I can. Please, do let me know if you become uncomfortable, and I will cease my attempts immediately."

Lance felt his heart race as Shiro stepped away, and Allura stepped closer. His cheeks flushed an obvious pink. His palms began to sweat. His infatuation with her was being revved up unnaturally high. He leaned away from her outstretched hands on reflex, a rather unfortunate whine escaping his throat. Immediate self-conscious embarrassment took over. Followed closely by shame.

She hesitated, but then finally let her fingertips rest delicately on his temples. "Just.. try to remain calm." 

She began to glow with quintessence. And so did he.

Lance screamed.

A blinding pain like a hot knife stabbed into his head, and he had to fling himself out of Allura's reach as the pain tore through every soft fibre of his body. "Lance!" She cried in alarm, moving to help him, but fearing she may do more harm than good. Shiro took up the mantle of checking on him. 

"Lance, buddy. What's happening?" He held his shoulders, and felt the unsteady tremor of Lance's body vibrate under his hold. Lance gasped for breath, the initial pain fading, but the effects of it still lingering. "I-I dunno! It hurt. Like.. felt like my brain was being torn apart." He barely got the words out, his hands clamping over his mouth to keep his insides, well.. _inside_. He wasn't sure what deity had kept him from puking this last day or so, but he needed to thank them later.

Everyone held their breath. Magic against magic seemed to do more harm than good, as far as they could tell. Hope was dying in all of them.

Lance himself was sick of this. Shiro had told him not to give up, but damnit, he wanted to give up. What was the point of all this suffering? They could replace him so easily. Just call Keith back, and they'd have an even better team. He was holding them back before, and he was holding them back even more now. He was keeping the universe from being saved.

The more he gave into these dark thoughts of giving up, the less pressure seemed to build. The darkness swallowed those feelings. It fed off them, leaving Lance back in a buzzing white noise of mild discomfort. He'd take it.

He let out a breath, easing his fingers from his head, leaving harsh dips in his skin from nails that needed a trim. He had an answer. He needed to keep himself from his team. He was getting more attention from them now that he wasn't well, but this was never the attention he'd wanted. And it was detrimental to the whole universe, too. 

"Just let it go, guys. Just.. give up on me." He murmured. He hid in the darkness of his mind when he physically felt the entire room tense in shock. 

"Lance, no!" Hunk cried, rushing to his friend. "We won't leave you like this, okay?"

"Hunk's right." Pidge affirmed, her face a mural of determination. "It's only been a few hours; we tried a couple things, and they didn't work. Rome wasn't built in a day."

Lance huffed, running his hands through his hair and clutching them behind his neck as he stared up at the ceiling in frustration. "I'm not an ancient city, and this is really, really painful for me. I'm _tired._ " 

"Give us a minute." Shiro ushered the team out of the hanger. The instant relief of a room with less people washed over Lance's nerves. 

"Shiro, _please_. I'm begging you. Just leave it. No more inspirational speeches, no more Up And Attums. This is pointless. Just call Keith, drag his scrawny ass back here, and be rid of me. Heck, even I can't stand me right now. I don't know how the rest of you are dealing with this." 

'This' being 'himself'. Himself was an epidemic. A catastrophe. A bomb.

"Your friends, Lance. They love you. Would you say stuff like this to Hunk if it happened to him?"

Lance's eyes widened. "No! No way! That's guy's a saint. He's so funny, and nice, and he's good at so much cool junk. Jeez, the world needs more Hunks." His heart swelled with feelings for his best friend, and the pain in his head returned, making Lance hiss and clutch at his temples.

"Right. So? What is it you think the rest of us feel about you?" Shiro asked patiently, hoping Lance's posture wasn't reflecting actual physical pain.

"That I have no talent, I'm all bark and no bite, I'm a sorry excuse for a soldier, a barely passable pilot, and I don't take anything seriously." He answered so quickly that Shiro was sure it was an answer Lance always had at the ready.

"Who thinks that, Lance?" 

"...."

Lance realized, maybe, he'd been projecting his own self doubt on everyone else. "I.. I dunno. I guess... No one.. thinks that..?"

"Not a single one of us." Shiro smiled softly. "We all have our flaws. We all have our weaknesses. A team works as a team not because everyone is talented, but because we balance each other out. But even if, IF, any of that horrible stuff you said was true? It would never be cause to treat you as flippantly as you're treating yourself."

Lance couldn't bear it. Shiro once again had the right words at the ready, and he just couldn't understand how one man could hold so much wisdom and kindness. "Shiro.." Lance croaked, feeling his head burn and eyes water. Hope was trying to grow again in his heart, and the darkness that ruled it kept painfully trying to snuff it out. He didn't want to believe in hope. He didn't want to experience the pain of it dying again. He didn't want to be tricked again. "I can't stand the thought of holding you guys back. The way I am right now.. I don't know if I'll ever be better again.. and now I can't even be a pilot. I.."

"Lance, listen to me. We will get through this. I'm sorry to ask this of you, but I need you to keep being strong. I know you can do it. No one bounces back as well as you do. Show me that tenacity I've admired all this time." 

Lance lifted his head. Everything hurt. His whole world was wrong, and he felt like the tracks of stability were so far gone he'd be stranded for eternity. 

But if he couldn't be strong for himself, he would be strong for his team. He'd be strong for Shiro, who saw more in him than Lance never thought anyone could see. More than he'd ever seen in himself.

His leader. His hero.

"Okay, Shiro." Lance stood up taller, braving the pain that tried to rip him apart from the seams, that tried to fight him as he clung to that fragile seed of hope. He'd win this. He'd win his body back from the druids' curse. Fists clenched, Lance raised his chin and felt hope burn brighter even inside the crushing darkness that ravaged his heart.

Fire burned in Lance's eyes.

Fire burned in a pair of large mechanical eyes behind him.

The Red lion's barrier vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By far my favourite chapter so far. I think this fanfic will end in the next chapter or two, if all goes well (and the plot fairy doesn't turn down a dirt road into the wilderness).


	10. Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The thrilling conclusion! Now that Lance has found his inner strength, it's time to face the final boss.

"Lance.. look behind you." Shiro's smile was so wide and proud, his eyes shining in awe. He was either staring at an aurora, or... 

Lance spun around. There was Red, leaning down and opening her jaw for him. "Red... Red!" The bad feelings took a backseat as every good and wonderful emotion sprung into his chest. Lance laughed, running, sprinting towards Red's cockpit. Everything was okay. Everything was fine. Red hadn't turned him away. 

"How..?" Lance smoothed his hand over the headrest of the pilot's seat, staring up at the glowing red lines of the view screens. Shiro smiled as he followed Lance inside, giving a low whistle of appreciation.

"I think, Lance, that Red admired your resolve in the face of great hardship. Wouldn't you agree?" Lance looked back at Shiro, giving him an overwhelmed smile. "I'm not sure.. but I'll take it." He breathed in deeply, not pushing his negative emotions away, but dealing with them alongside the good ones. 

"Okay, Shiro. Let's go see the others. We gotta take back that colony, and put an end to those druids' games." 

\- - -

Everyone had gathered on the bridge. The moment Lance entered with a posture that radiated a fighting spirit, Hunk flung himself at him with tears in his big brown eyes. "Oh man. You look so much better! Did you guys fix the curse?"

"No." Lance answered, finding comfort in Hunk's embrace, even as the bees of bad energy stung inside his blood. "It's still there. I just needed a kick in the pants, that's all. I got this." He smirked at Shiro, who nodded firmly back.

With that, Shiro turned to address the inhabitants of the Castle of Lions, hands behind his back like a proper military officer. 

"We may have lost our last battle, but we won't give up yet. Let's move past this defeat, and find another way. Pidge, you were going through the data of our scans on that colony the other day. Find anything new?"

Pidge sat in her command chair, typing quickly at the floating keyboard. "I think so. The more I go over any communications that went in or out before we took out those towers, the more it seems like there isn't a single native on that colony that isn't imprisoned. As far as I can tell, this colony is just a glorified prison, and not a taken over habitat. Or so the correspondence goes.."

Hunk furrowed his brow. "Okay.. but there's still people that need help, right?"

"Right. Probably. But who sent that distress signal? I mean, it's plausible someone got out and had enough time to send it.. but judging by the way the Galra were ready for us?"

"Maybe the prisoner got caught, and they were just on high alert." Lance added, going over his own probabilities in his head.

"Maybe. But I have a hunch that this was all a set up. It had been way too easy for the three of us to get in there and find the video footage. But the actual cells? It was road block after road block."

Lance had a curling, sick feeling boring a hole in his gut. "Are you saying the prison isn't actually there?"

Pidge looked up, her brows knit in pain. "It's.. just a theory. We never saw any cells. Just the control room, and a map with heat signatures. Could have been anything. Maybe it's there, maybe it's elsewhere."

Hunk was still standing near Lance, and he started to piece together what the others were seeing. He breathed in sharply, laying a hand on Lance's shoulder. "Wait. Wait wait wait.. They gave us footage of prisoners getting brain tortured... there was no actual visual confirmation of the prisoners or a holding bay for them... and that distress call might have been a trap? For..."

Everyone looked at Lance. Lance felt his innards twist painfully. "...Why me?" He breathed uncertainly. Pidge, Shiro and Allura had been in the building, and no one came for them. But Lance...

No one had an answer to that. 

Lance could feel fear thrash through his mind, attacking everything in sight. He needed to keep his head above it, but it felt like drowning in a tank with no surface to breech. Hunk's hand on his shoulder was grounding, if only by a small margin. It was getting hard to breathe.   
_Fight it._   
Yes, he had to be stronger than the fear. It was going to wreck him, but he found a strange pride in keeping his head up even as the tidal wave crashed into him. He'd die with his boots on, so to speak.

"If we can confirm there's no prisoners there.." Lance began, his voice wavering. He spoke on regardless. "Then what? Blow the place up?" He'd love to blow it up, whether it'd help anything or not. Maybe not the most heroic of desires though.

"Last time we went in, we were making a point of using stealth to keep off the radar. This time, I say we go in with the intention of sabotage." Pidge grinned wickedly, her glasses flashing with mischief. "All of us as a group, no getting separated. We blow up walls, doors, whatever. We blast our way down, and see for ourselves whether the prisoners exist or not."

Everyone looked to each other for a voice of reason, or a word of caution.

Every single member of the group gave the most nonchalant of shrugs in perfect sync.

"Meh. Let's do it." Said Lance with more ease than he felt.

\- - -

A wall exploded. Shrapnel flew off from the blast point, and littered both hallways which had now become one. Lance leered at Pidge from behind his shield. "Do I even want to know how you and Hunk built a bag full of bombs in two Vargas? Do you just have them stockpiled? Actually, no. Never mind. I don't wanna know." Lance waved a hand in the air to shoo away the possible truth. Pidge for her part looked pleased as punch. Hunk looked sheepish.

"Shame, really. It's actually really interesting." Pidge replied, standing with the others and making their way through the wrecked hall. 

A Galra soldier with a small entourage of sentries rounded a corner and began firing. Allura formed her whip, flicking it down the hall and capturing the Galra in it's vice. With a grunt from the princess, she ripped the soldier from his calvary and flung him behind the team and into a wall. Said team tried not to gawk, and instead focused on taking down the remaining sentries. 

Robotic parts now littered the floor. The team scurried past them, and Hunk picked up some pieces and added them to the bag.

"Hunk.." Lance chided.

"What? Spare parts are a mechanics best friend!" 

They moved on.

They reached a lab quite like the one Lance had been found in. Lance didn't have any memory of it, since his eyes had been closed for the majority of his stay there. He mentioned as much to his team, when asked of any significance pertaining to the room and it's use. 

"So, is there anything beyond this room?" Hunk looked around, but the space itself was fairly void of clutter. Just a platform for patients to lie on, and a small computer station off to the side. Pidge was already going through it.

"Guys, there is nothing here. This facility is either very new, or they didn't keep any patient info here." She huffed, kicking the bottom panel for good measure. 

"Then what was this place meant for? I mean the facility as a whole, if we're thinking the whole 'it's a trap' route." Hunk sat on the platform, looking up at the ceiling. Lance kept a wary eye on the door they'd come in from. 

"Well, they got that footage from somewhere," Allura chimed in, "Meaning there are people out there in dire need of rescue. Sadly, if they aren't here, I'm afraid tracking them will prove nearly impossible. Besides, they aren't the only ones in the universe in need of rescue." This weighed heavily on her, on them all, knowing there were countless souls being harmed. It was nearly out of their hands. 

Shiro nodded, a haunted veil falling over his eyes. "Meaning we need to turn our focus on to things we can do. We can't win every battle, but there is a greater war out there worth fighting in. Gathering allies into the Voltron Coalition is a solid step to a bigger goal."

They all gazed around at the empty room, the realization they'd have to turn their backs on individuals for the greater good not settling well in their stomachs. 

And there was still Lance's condition to worry over. While he was steadily keeping his chin up about the whole thing, one person's inner strength had it's limits. Running on a broken leg wouldn't win you the race.

They needed help.

Suddenly, the door snapped shut. 

"Woah! What's happening?" Hunk yelped, sliding off the platform and bringing up his bayard. Three druids appeared, each one taking up a corner of the room. The paladins were near backing up into the final corner.

Lance felt his mind swing into vertigo. The world turned upside down, he lost his balance, collapsing onto the ground. 

His team cried out to him as he sat there on the cold floor, head dropping in his hand. He fought to see past the spots crawling across his eyes like melting spiders. The remaining paladins surrounded him and faced off against the druids. One more materialized in the centre of the room.

"Haggar!" Allura's eyes blazed in fury. Lance tried to look up, but it felt as if he was on a ship swaying horribly on a stormy sea. Sweat began to bead down his face and neck, his body flushing in sudden fever. It felt like his brain was swimming loosely in his head.

"Princess.." Haggar sneered from under her hood, her hands glowing with sinister energy.

"What do you want?" Shiro demanded, stepping forward with one foot, his arm glowing in anger. "What's your end game here? What did you do to our Paladin?"

"I simply saw an opportunity. The mind is a tricky subject, but those who are already vulnerable are much more easily manipulated. Let's see how well this works.." She snapped her fingers, and her druids flew into action. Dark, menacing energy crashed like lightning into Allura, Pidge and Hunk. The latter of them fell to their knees in agony as electric bolts burned under their armour. Allura winced in pain, but managed to hold her own against it. 

Haggar went for Shiro, the pair of them battling in a fashion eerily similar to a clash they'd had once before. 

She had him surrounded in copies of herself, easily distracting him as he attacked one after the other in hopes of finding her real body. The real Haggar silently slipped past the struggling Paladins, heading for Lance.

Lance felt his physical strength drain as his fever rose, burning him up and making him sweat uncomfortably. His inner strength was wilting under the strain of a growing panic that scratched and clawed at his defences. He felt a wash of relief come over him when a cold hand smoothed over his forehead.

"Give in."

A flood of memories hit him with monumental force. Watching his team slowly move away from him, as he fell behind in every respect of the word. An ache in his heart as he reached for relationships that went nowhere. Allura scoffing at his flirtations. Keith leaving the team even though he'd thought they'd made such a great team. Hunk shooing him from the kitchen. Pidge levelling him with a look of exasperation when Lance got impatient with her talking science over his head. The memories were given a wash of dark and angry energy.  
Blue's barrier blocking him out. Red's barrier... Rejection, rejection.

"Give in."

The memories hurt, they hurt terribly. But something still burned bright deep inside.

Lance dove free of the tidal wave of negative energy, and free fell into the darkest corners of his wavering heart. There, he found the flourishing little light inside. He reached out to it.

Shiro's kind face as he spoke of Lance's strengths. Hunk's delighted laughter when Lance cracked an obviously terrible joke. Keith's stunned expression as Lance gave him advice, and the feeling of warmth when Keith actually adhered to that advice. Allura's proud little smiles. Pidge's sparkling eyes as she admired new technology.

Lance came to a realization as the darkness chased after him down here in the cockles of his heart. He'd never cared if his friends came looking for him. He never did the things he did just to expect it coming back to him.

He loved helping them. Loved their smiles and laughter. Loved to see them happy and flourish. Lance didn't help others to serve himself. He helped others simply because he loved them.

_Love._

The light grew brighter and brighter, a wild mix of blues, reds and blinding whites. It overtook the dark druid energy. It fought back. A roar so powerful ripped through the heart and lashed out at the sinister druid magic.

When Lance came back to his body, it was to the sound of Haggar screaming. He opened his eyes, watched as she held her hand as if it had been scalded. Her body was awash of the druid magic that Lance had somehow purged from his own body. 

He felt healthier than he had in weeks. And he was ready for a come back.

Lance's weapon materialized in his hands, and blasted Haggar point blank. She flew backward, dissolving her copies as she crashed across the floor. His team looked on in awe.

"Lance.." Shiro gawked, holding an injured arm after a long fight with multiple copies of an evil witch. 

Lance stood up, cracking his shoulders as he rolled them back. "Pay back, boys." He grinned, flashing a cocky smile that hadn't been seen in an age. His team found strength in that smile. They found hope.

Team Voltron stood tall, and faced off against a room full of druids and their master.

Haggar sneered, snapped her fingers, and the druids got the memo. All four vanished. The room began to shake violently.

"What the--?" Hunk wobbled on his feet. Pidge hissed and ran for the control panel. "I think they might have triggered something. Lemme just see if--" She was about to check the database for any sign of a bomb or other booby traps, but Shiro grabbed her shoulder, pulling her back.

"No time! If this place is coming down, then we need to evac, right now!"

Everyone agreed.

They ran. Not a single Galra soldier remained inside to stop them. Through crumbling halls and rooms and bays that seemed to be caving in, they ran and flew. Their lives depended on it.

They finally reached the hanger, and all five paladins escaped into the safety of their lions. Within seconds of flying up into the air, the whole facility imploded. 

When the lions left the atmosphere, the crushing silence was near deafening. Lance finally started to hear his own exasperated breathing as he leaned over in his chair. The last varga seemed to have happened in a wild blur. Was this all.. truly over?

He closed his eyes. All that resided in his mind was his own thoughts. Maybe they weren't calm, but they were... they were normal.

"Well!" Lance gasped out, leaning back and running a hand through his sweat soaked hair. "Fun ride! Time to hit the showers?"

Silence.

Then a snort. Hunk. "Good idea, Lance." The faces of his team mates lined the bottom of his view screen. All of them winded, tired, but happy to see their blue Paladin back in action. 

\- - -

"You truly feel well again, Lance?" Allura asked, her hand on his shoulder as they stood on the bridge. Lance smiled, giving a nod. "Yeah, I do. I feel like I learned a few things from that whole experience, yanno? Made me a better person." He wanted to follow with a joke or maybe a bad pick up line. But maybe honesty was best. He didn't have to hide his true heart from his friends. They'd love him anyway, and he loved them back.

"Good. Nice to know you can learn something." Pidge called from her chair, working on some strange pile of armour with Hunk. 

"Rude, Pidge." Lance snarked back, shrugging off any hurt the jibe might have left. Pidge didn't say these things to hurt. She said them because she liked him. Besides.. if she ever did say something that crossed a line, Lance knew now all he'd have to do is speak up. Shiro had taught him that. To be true to his own heart; that was how he'd fight the darkness.

"Well, I'll let you nerds have fun building.. whatever." Lance said with a stretch of his arms. "I'll go hang out with Kaltenecker." 

"Aaah, nope. You aren't going anywhere Lance." Shiro said with a sharp grin, holding the boy back. Lance blinked up, confused. "Huh? Why?"

"Training!" Coran said with a grin. "Shiro says we all need to bond better as a team!" Coran too? Lance looked at them all, wearing matching grins.

"Close your eyes, Lance." Allura said with a delighted grin, her hands balled up near her chest in excitement. Lance flushed slightly, and closed his eyes. He heard giggling, which made him a little bit nervous. Then someone pressed something heavy against his chest, snapping it into place behind his back. "Guys? You're makin' me a little bit nervous here." He said with a bit more of a squeak in his voice than he meant to.

Finally, a large gun of some sort was pressed into his hands.

"Alright Lance. Open!" Allura's voice. Lance opened his eyes.

Everyone was wearing the strange armour plates over their chests. They all had guns that looked like the one he now carried. Each one had a large hose that looped behind them. On their backs, a tank of... 

"Is.. are these Food Goo Guns?" Lance asked with mild horror.

Pidge grinned like a kid at Christmas. "Me and Hunk have been working on them all week. We thought, since you've had such a hard time lately, we'd test it out today as a celebration of your recovery."

Shiro gave a firm nod. "Team Bonding. Lance style."

Lance was overwhelmed. He didn't know what to say. Allura's smile softened, and she laid a gentle hand on Lance's cheek.

"Lance.." She murmured. Lance's heart caught in his throat. Then she smirked so deviously it was as if she'd been possessed by Pidge. "Tag. You're it."

The entire team fled the bridge in a symphony of laughter. Coran included.

Lance's mouth opened wide in a smile so full of delight and excitement, he felt it splitting at the corners. "Ooooh you guys are going down! The Sharpshooter leaves no survivors!"

Their game lasted for hours. The halls were a mess of dried, wasted food goo. The light in all of their hearts burned brighter, because they were a team. They were friends. They had each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Thank you for all the kudos and comments! I hope Lance's story here helps you find your own inner light in times of hardship and self doubt. I know life can be hard, but we have each other, and the air in our lungs. Live for the moment and keep that lovely chin up.
> 
> I'd love to write more fan fiction in the future. Please look forward to it!

**Author's Note:**

> I love VLD so much, and I love the whole Castle Team. I don't write them any justice, but I try! The babies all deserve love!


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